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4.8 A-8 I.S. Suri claimed that he was merely posted as an Accountant and had no independent power related to cheque purchase, TOD, exceedings etc. and only Branch Manager enjoyed such powers. According to him, in order to protect the interest of senior officers of Regional Office and Head Office, he has been falsely implicated in the present matter. He also entered into witness box as DW1.

RIVAL CONTENTIONS 5.0 Ms. Jyotsna Sharma Pandey, learned Public Prosecutor for CBI has contended that prosecution has been able to prove its case to the hilt. According to her, bank officials had openly defied the Manual of Instructions and various guidelines of the bank and exceeded their discretionary power and kept on purchasing cheques beyond their discretionary powers and did not even report such fact to the Regional Office. She has contended that officials of Dena Bank, who have graced the witness box, have clearly indicated the malpractices adopted by all the public servants-accused and it stands proved that they had purchased cheques in arbitrary manner and permitted temporary overdrafts on number of occasions.

i. Nothing was ever hidden from the Regional Office. Whenever, any bill or cheque was purchased, telephonic intimation was given and purchase was with the oral confirmation.
ii. Even as per the testimony of prosecution witnesses, in particular PW3 R.C. Dahiya and PW4 N.K. Sehgal, taking oral instructions was not uncommon.
iii. Purchasing cheques beyond discretionary powers/purchasing local cheques and granting temporary overdraft are inherent in banking transactions and these did per se amount to any misconduct.
iii. He was posted as Accountant and joined Maya Puri Branch barely on 17.06.1997 and his job was to render assistance to Branch Manager and he never acted independently except for limited period of one week i.e. between 17.06.1997 & 22.06.1997 and thereafter Sh. P.K. Sahi joined as Branch Manager and A-8 Suri, being Accountant, was even otherwise not competent to purchase any cheque or grant any temporary overdraft.

iv. Moreover, other bank officials like Sh. JDK Jain and Sh. Prem Singh Kalyan, who had also handled the account in question, have not been made accused. They have not been cited as witnesses either and thus CBI has adopted pick and choose policy.

11.20 Moreover, when the cheques purchased in the account in question returned dishonoured, they should have debited the same to the account of party but for totally inexplicable reasons, these were debited to the suspense account known as 'imprest clearing account'. PW3 Sh. R.C. Dahiya as well as PW4 Naresh Sehgal have made extensive reference to various such vouchers which go on to indicate that the cheques, when returned dishonoured, were debited to imprest clearing head and not to the party's account. It is also quite apparent that various cheques purchased by these two bank officials were not even sent for realization. Those were perhaps kept in cold storage. Few such cheques were sent after considerable delay and as already noticed above that when some of such cheques returned dishonoured, these were either debited to imprest clearing head or re-purchased. This was naturally done so that nobody comes to know about the rising outstanding in the party's account. I am not ready to buy the defence theory that even such debit to the imprest clearing head was as per the instructions of Sh. Tandon. I rather feel that they are unnecessarily trying to malign the departed soul. Testimony of PW4 Naresh Sehgal also clearly indicates that temporary overdrafts (TODs) was allowed to M/s Kohinoor Metals and M/s K.K. Trading Corporation on number of occasions.